


Understanding

by bendingwind



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-16
Updated: 2010-06-16
Packaged: 2017-10-10 03:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shikamaru muses on Temari's significance in his life and presents her with a simple gift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding

It's a little ironic that she should be the one who keeps him grounded, he thinks, given that her element is the _wind._ There is every indication that she should bring nothing but trouble to his life: she is a woman, with the elemental power of wind, the power to blow things about, confuse things, muddle the world around her. The power of the storm.

And Shikamaru loves clouds, but he hates storms.

He realizes that people don't understand his cloud envy. They think it is merely a form of laziness, a desire to shirk his responsibilities and relax for hours on end. Actually it is born of a desire to go away, to become nothing more than a drifting cloud, because clouds aren't plagued by a constant barrage of sharp-edged thoughts from a too-large brain. A desire to cease to exist- not to die, but rather, to never have been born. The world will never be enough, because he is too brilliant, and even such a vast wonder is not enough to fill his brain.

It isn't until Ino points out that he never goes cloud-watching when Temari is around that he figures it out. People are rarely interesting to him- he loves Chouji because Chouji is _good _in a way that he will never be, and Ino because she tries to tie him to the world even though he wants nothing more than to fade away- and that is part of the reason he doesn't get much enjoyment out of life. Part of the reason he wants to simply fade away.

Temari is different. There is something fascinating about her, a certain intricacy and brightness that captivates him, not unlike her namesake held his interest when he was a child. For the first time in his life, he wonders if he has found someone who may be his equal, someone who _might_ just be enough to fill up the space that the world cannot.

She turns up in Konoha the day before her twenty-third birthday, and he feels a little bit smug that he already has a gift waiting for her. A little shyly -which is strange, because Shikamaru is rarely _shy- _he offers her a temari intricately woven into a semblance of the globe. He wonders if she realizes what he is trying to say.

He knows it's a child's gift, he explains. But he thinks that it suits her... them.

She cuts off further explanation with a bright smile and a nod, and he knows that she understands.

She watches plants as often as he watches clouds, after all. Shikamaru sometimes forgets that storms are troublesome, but they leave water and life in their wake.

Temari keeps him grounded.


End file.
